On the last day of 1930, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency printed an open letter from Albert Einstein, praising the Talmud’s “high cultural values” and its importance both to the Jewish people and to “science,” and calling for its continued operation “as a living force.” The letter’s original recipient was Chaim Tchernowitz, an energetic Russian-American rabbi who wrote frequently in the Hebrew and Yiddish press under the pseudonym Rav Tsa’ir. As Yair Rosenberg explains, it was Tchernowitz who made the renowned physicist—himself entirely ignorant of the Talmud—into a passionate advocate for that text:

[Tchernowitz] and Einstein were friends for twenty years—from their first meeting [until] Tchernowitz’s death in 1949. The two men visited each other on multiple continents, kept up a regular correspondence, and even took vacations together. . . . The story begins in September 1930, when Tchernowitz arrived in Berlin for a short stay and received a surprise invitation to Einstein’s summer home. Sending such overtures was actually a popular pastime for the famed physicist. Whenever a prestigious thinker or political official came to town, he would invite him to his residence.

Tchernowitz, of course, said yes. “I had seen him before in passing,” the rabbi recalled in his memoir of their encounter, “but had never spoken with him in person.” What, then, prompted Einstein’s overture? Tchernowitz soon found out: “Immediately upon my arrival, he asked me in all earnestness—without looking at my face—if I was indeed an expert in the Talmud, as he had heard, and what exactly is the Talmud?”

In fact, notes Rosenberg, Einstein more than once bemoaned his own lack of Judaic knowledge:

“How deeply do I regret not having been more diligent in studying the language and literature of our fathers,” Einstein wrote to his childhood Jewish-studies teacher, Heinrich Friedmann, in 1929. “I read the Bible quite often, but the original text remains inaccessible to me.”

And perhaps it was precisely for that reason that he came to endorse Tchernowitz’s project to make talmudic wisdom accessible in English—which was the impetus to the letter quoted above.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.